The Carbon advocate. [volume] (Lehighton, Pa.) 1872-1924, 1887-07-09
IN TIE LABOR WORLD.
Specially Compiled for the TOilers by an Ad-
vocato Man.

The Lehigh Zinc and Iron Company
will pay their employees semi-monthly after
July 10th.
The Underhill Hat Manufacturing
Company of Hazleton has been chartered
with capital of $4,000.
The railroads of this country ewn
abobt 100000 freight cars used in revenue
service, which represents capital to the
amount Of at least s4oOeoO,O 900.
About 200 pounds of iron and steel are
made for every head Of population in Great
Britain, 270 in the United States and 107
in Europe, while the average for the entire
globe is 32 pounds.
The Edwards Iron Company, Wood
stock, Ala, is engaged in repairing and en-
larging its blast furnace and building 100
coke ovens. It will mine and coke its own
coal and make pig iron.
= Boston CAPITALISTS have bought five
acres of ground in Scranton as a site for a
merchant steel and steel tool factory, and
work at the buildings is to begin at snce.
The establishment will emplsy 400 men.
There are at this tlHe three hundred
and eiGhty-fys silk factories in the United
States, with $4,000 employees and upwards
of 1926 100000 of capital, using annually
$50, 100000 worth of raw material of for
eign production.
The Iowa Barb Wire Mill, at Allen
town now employs four hundred men, and
its product of full-finished barbed fencing
averages fifty-five tons per day. The wire
is shipped to all parts Of the world, includ-
ing South Africa, the Sandwich Island,
Austria and New Zealand.
There are contracts out among the car
works for 10000 cars. Nearly all the rail-
road companies have arrangements under
way for increasing their shop facilities.
The Pennsylvania Railroad will lead off
with a S50,000 machine and repair shop.
Machine shop work is in very active de-
mand.
Car shops all over thls State are now
well supplied with orders, and expect to be
kept so during the rest of the year. The
shops at Huntington will be put in opera
tion early next month with an order for
three thousand coal cars of new design,
which are intended for the Reading Rail
road Company.
The development of the woollen ia-
dustry in Wisconsin and Iowa and the
cotton industry in Texas, Arkansas and
and further West, especially in view of coal
and natural gas developments, is assuming
an important phase, and the time may soon
come when the far West and far South will
not be quite SO dependent on the far East
for textile goods.
-Seyfert's rolling mills at Naomi and
Gibraltur, Berks county, have closed on
account OF the stoppage at the Reading
Iron Works, and nearly two hundred more
men are out of employment in consequence
Because the rolling mill and nail factory
employees of the E. S G. Brooke Iron Com
pany, at Birdsbow refuse to accept.a reduc-
ton of wages, the works are closed and
oyer three hundred hands are idle.
The anthracite coal trade is now in ex-
cellent shape, awaiting the beginning of
active business. There is, to be sure, a
considerable quantity of coal in stock at
tide-water shipping points, but, owing to
the harmony prevailing in anthracite cir
cles, that cannot to any great extent in
fiuence the coal markets or effect prices, as
q weeks suspension of missing would re-
suit in the removal of the entire accumula-
tion of coal at time. Some of The larger
companies did not work their mines full
time last week.
In comparing the wages now and two
years ago Bradstreet's finds that they have
generally increased to the standard of the
years 1881 and 1882, which were very pros
porous periods. and 400, ,0O0 more industrial
employees were at work than there were in
1885. From 1882 to 1885 there was a gem
eral decline in the rate of wages, the aver
age being from 10 to IS per cent, and since
the latter year there has been a gradual
increase, until now not only has the Is per
cent. reduction been recovered but the
activity in almost every branch of trade has
given employment TO hundreds of thousands
of additional workmen.
OiAiSiai icthiio ohON lUdb bilt lIOuuC-
tion of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania
last year was 36,G96,4 tons, against 81
623, ,529 tons in 1885. Under the Revenue
law that was repealed in 1879, aud which
imposed a tax of cents ton on the pro-
duct of the anthracite coal companies. the
yeild of last year would have brought into
the State Treasury upward of 81 ,0O0,O
This tax on anthracite coal if in existence
to-day would have gone very far toward
solving the problem of State revenues
The coal corporations, which merely col
lected the small tax from consumers as
agents of the Commonwealth, did not ask
for its repeal, and it is not likely that they
would make very obstinate resistance to its
restoration.